Issued by the International Accounting Standards Board, IFRS 17 for accounting of insurance contracts goes into effect January 1, 2022, with prior-year comparative reporting required. Under IFRS 17, which replaces IFRS 4, insurance contract liabilities have to be calculated as the present value of future insurance cash flows with a provision for risk. Its goal is to increase transparency and provide greater confidence in reported numbers through the use of a single, consistent accounting model for all insurance contracts. The new reporting standard, applicable to any company issuing insurance contracts, represents the biggest change to insurance accounting in more than 20 years.

“IFRS17 compliance is a major project for every insurance company since it will have significant impact on most finance and accounting processes, and will significantly alter the presentation of the financial results,” said Patrick Klijnsmit, director of group accounting, reporting, and control at ASR. “Given this huge challenge, we were very conscious of time constraints and implementation risks and selected after a thorough process an IFRS 17 solution to give us enough time to plan, prepare and implement before the actual deadline.”